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Opinion: Editorials

Editorial: Snapshots from the nation's press

Posted:
12/07/2015 07:55:55 AM MST

Congress fails a simple test

House and Senate legislators concluded months of tense negotiations last week, agreeing on a transportation bill that will allocate $305 billion to roads, rails and bike paths during the next five years. Leaders patted themselves on the back for meeting a major national need in a bipartisan way. You can hold the applause.

True, the bill is something of an improvement over Congress's recent habits. It is long-term, so state transportation planners and businesses can anticipate the size and shape of federal transportation funding a few years out. The bill preserves a sizeable chunk of money for public transit. It includes double-digit-percentage increases in spending on both roads and transit. Meanwhile, it streamlines federal construction permitting. Given the nation's infrastructure needs, all of that represents progress.

But lawmakers failed a simple test in how to pay for the bill. The federal gasoline tax once funded the national highway tab, and for good reasons: It's predictable, it's sustainable and it's fair, ensuring that drivers pay for the roads according to how much they use them, rather than asking others to subsidize their driving. But Congress hasn't raised the tax since 1993, letting it languish at 18.4 cents per gallon even as inflation and other factors eroded the value of the revenue it produced. For years, the obvious solution has been to raise the gas tax to a suitable level.

Congress did not embrace the obvious solution. Instead, lawmakers resorted to a variety of gimmicks, one-time funding sources and flat-out bad policies to raise the $70 billion they needed to supplement revenue from a frozen gas tax.

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—Washington Post

S.F. housing controls

What's politically popular isn't always legally sound. That's the message the courts are sending San Francisco's trigger-happy lawmakers in rejecting a pair of housing control laws designed to protect tenants facing eviction.

Twice in two years, judges in both state and federal court have dinged city laws aimed at curbing Ellis Act evictions. Those are tenant ousters by landlords who want to get out of the rental business and often intend to turn the vacated units into condos.

These evictions have spurred protests outside apartment buildings and rallies at City Hall. That's naturally caught the attention of legislators, anxious over soaring housing costs and eager to preserve rental units.

But the cures aren't working, at least in the legal sense. The latest measure imposed relocation costs up to $50,000 on property owners for each tenant booted out. The figure was intended to help displaced renters find new quarters in an ultra-costly city, but the high price also aimed to kill the rental-to-condo dynamic. Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay said the financial penalties were unreasonable, a far cry from the usual expenses of a tenant's removal.

The case was nearly a rerun of a federal court review of a similar Ellis Act prevention measure. That plan required a two-year rent subsidy with no financial limit on tenant expenses. It was shot down by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who said it harmed property rights and unfairly saddled landlords with the bill for a housing crisis not of their making.

The message should be sinking in. Not every housing problem can be legislated out of existence with hefty financial penalties and limitations. Controls must weigh legality and balance along with popularity.

On the November ballot is Prop. I, a plan to ease Mission District displacement by stopping market-rate housing construction for 18 months. It may be the most sweeping proposal yet, and perhaps the most counterproductive: attempting to relieve housing pressure by suppressing supply.

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